Petaluma and a African Safari-Day #5

- June 20, 2021

Day #5 African safari and The city of Petaluma.

This post will be late because I lost my whole post. I hate that when it happens. Probably my fault but still it’s annoying. Now I have to remember what we did on Day #5. We started the day off checking out of Rick’s Hideaway and drove to the city of Petaluma. It has a cute downtown, a local creamery, breweries, wineries, and antiques. Since we only had two hours we visited one antique store that was in a old bank in the heart of downtown and visited the Petaluma Creamery.

The bank had been turned into a antique store, so we ended up browsing there for quite some time. Three floors of antiques Made this place a real treat. We ran into a lovely older lady in the basement of the store and she struck up a conversation with us about her experience of staying at Bob Dillion’s house to help house sit during WoodStock. She and her older brother and her friend (ages 16-19 at the time) had tickets to Woodstock but because the road to Woodstock was so busy they changed their plans and stayed with a friend who was house sitting at Bob Dillion’s House for the Weekend. What a amazing story. She also saw that Mark had a Tom Leher album in his hand and proceeded to talk about her experiences of going to a Beetles concert and how she used to sing a Tom Leher lullaby to her son every night. She even stopped right there in the store, held the album in her hands and sang the whole song to us by heart. What a precious moment and the most disturbing lullaby I’ve ever heard.

She encouraged us to visit the creamery next. Unfortunately the creamery had lost all of its charm most likely due to Covid. I digress…I looked it up and it seems that the creamery has been working in violation with the city for approximately 10 years and has a outstanding debt to the tune of over a million dollars. https://www.petaluma360.com/article/news/petaluma-creamery-a-sonoma-county-landmark-confronts-uncertain-future/amp/

After the creamery we took a quick drive through at the In-N-Out Burger and headed over to Safari West. Our burgers were good but super messy. Double double Meat and Cheese Lettuce wrapped! We definitely haven’t spent much $$ on food since we are still eating Keto. It was $9.35 for lunch! Yay. We are definitely drinking our carbs and $$’s at the wineries here though;)

Safari West was a lucky treat. Reservations are required and I had been trying for two weeks to snag one. Luckily two reservations opened up on 6/16 so we chose to forgo our wine for the day and enjoy a three hour Safari tour with a great guide and some cool water and a beer/white claw. Our guide was slightly frustrated at the group since it contained loud children and a few adults who wanted nothing more than to see a animal and shriek excitedly and talk loudly over what he had to say. I don’t do well in these situations since I want to get my monies worth. Thankfully the guide could sense that and he seated us up front so we could hear and interact with him. The temperature was 108 degrees so sitting in a jeep under some shade was helpful. We saw so many animals up close and some personal. There was a Ostrich who wanted one of the ladies hoop earrings on our trip. The guide kept saying that he had a personal relationship with all the animals. He said one of the giraffes took off his belt one day and have him kisses!! Yuck 🤢. Although when we got to the water Buffalo he refused to get out of the Jeep. He said they are not friendly and considered the most dangerous animal in the African Jungle. The African Watusi were stunning and ended up showing off by having a horn battle. Most animals that have horns have blood running through their horns so a loss of a horn or injury of a horn would cause severe blood loss. Much like nicking a artery…it’s amazing to me how much time and care went into creating these animals. The female Rhino was getting acquainted with a new male Rhino. He had only been there for two days. He was a Texan Rhino Stud who was brought over to encourage breeding. He came over to say hi when she was mud bathing and she stood up and stomped her heels and told him to get away. Luckily he listened. He went away sulking, that was evident.

After the Safari went dropped by the store, grabbed 2 steaks, some lettuce, red pepper, Avocado and ice cream Keto bars and headed back to the cottage to check in to our new Airbnb in Windsor.